HiI recently flashed my Bios in my home machine, when rebooting I switched the SATA controller back to RAID mode and it picked up the array's just fine.The machine would then not boot from the RAID array with the Win 7 partition on it, I tried everything in the BIOS but what it came down to was the partition simply was not bootable anymore.No idea why this has happened, so I loaded the Win 7 Ultimate DVD I downloaded from technet and decided to have a go with the Startup Repair tool.No operating systems detected on initial load, not positive. I thought it might be a driver issue but clearly not as the Intel Storage Matrix drivers are embedded into the release of Win 7. If I clicked to search for an installation I could read the C: drive (Win 7 system on the System0 raid0 array) and the D: drive (Raid5 storage array on the same controller) so it clearly was not a driver issue, something literally had erased the MBR or whatever it uses now from the drive.So with this in mind I let the system repair tool go at the OS to see the partitions and fix the MBR. ____ I could see the drives, the system files, the Win 7 installation and the %systemroot% folder so I assumed it would be an easy job. Given a command line and fdisk / diskpart I could have probably done it myself. The tool ran for about 65 minutes solid, giving me no indication at all as to when it might be finishing only stating it may take "Several minutes".So the automated tool went off for over an hour to do what I could have by command line given the correct tools in 5 minutes.Is this meant to be some sort of intentional kick******?After this amount of time looking at a supposedly "infinite" progress bar I'm presented with a screen that now tells me"IF repairs were successful, Windows will start correctly".Really?REALLY?Is this meant to be some sort of joke?Windows XP had an option to pickup an installed OS and repair all the system files reverting it back to a good state, this thing took 65 minutes to tell me it's not even sure if it could fix a problem. Is this supposed to be progress?"You should have backed up and restored an image of your pc!" I hear you cry.Sadly not, as I wanted to backup a system state, but due to Windows backup being completely inflexible even in the "ULTIMATE" version it insisted on backing up my entire storage array (1.5TB) into the backup image and there was utterly nothing I could do to deselect this. Hence no system state backup image of my machine because of the nature of the backup util and my inability to provide it with a 2TB partition needed to backup the array and the system drive.This really is an utter, utter shambles.To say I'm "mildly dissapointed" with the functionality of Win 7 in relation to recovery etc would be a massive understatement.Microsoft have effectively just cost me 4 hours of my time for a problem I can fix manually but am banned from doing so.Oh and just so you know, my 65 minutes of waiting have done nothing at all, it appears to be utterly unable to fix an MBR and my PC has gone back into a loop of rebooting from the DVD drive.Nice one guys.

Just a small update, I took it upon myself to go into diskpart and investigate. I set the proper partition back to active and on a reboot it said "BOOTMGR is missing". Awesome, at least it's now trying to boot of the right partition. I go back into the Win 7 system repair util and this time it scans for a bit and instantly says to me "Windows has found a problem with your installation" I hit the button "repair and reboot". Result! Right? The partition is active, it's picked up a clear issue of boot manager being missing and fixed the issue on reboot. Sadly not. Next boot, "BOOTMGR is missing". I sighed a little almost expecting this to go wrong again, went back into the Windows 7 system repair util yet again and tried the process one more time. This time I got a repeat of the message saying "if repairs have been succesful Windows 7 will boot normally". So I've rebooted yet again and FINALLY, FINALLY this time the OS is booting from the hard drive. Now one very important question, why did it take me having to run diskpart manually, inserting the active partition and then running the repair 3 times in a row to get this result? What exactly WAS the system repair tool doing in the 65 minutes it ran on my drives to achieve nothing? If someone has a legit answer to this I'd love to hear it, mostly because if I was a standard LUSER at this point I'd be paying good money to take my PC into a repair shop only to most likely be told I'd have to reformat. I'm currently sat here watching Win 7 trying to boot going over EVERY file segment on the disk fixing "incorrect information". It's currently up to record 30,000 and I have no idea how many more I have to go... perhaps this has something to do with the 65 minutes that the "repair utility" sat there and played with my drives? I'm willing to bet that if this process takes around 65 minutes to fix I might be on to something. PLEASE FIX THIS

Well fancy that... Almost exactly 65 minutes later and the repair process is apparently complete, about 72 minutes to be precise. Can anyone from Microsoft comment on this please? It seems the Sys Repair tool potentially spent 65 minutes corrupting the files on my hard drive before chkdsk spent another 70 minutes repairing them again after I'd put the initial fix in to rectify the issue. I could be speculating unfairly here but it seems a little too close to the bone for my linking. Almost the exact amount of time passes with chkdsk fixing these files as the system repair took to play with the files on the disk and achieve nothing... I'm still waiting to see if Win7 will boot into a GUI.

I know the repair disk can only perform one repair at a time, probably because it's working at low bit performance, so from what I see it repairs the first fault it detects which usually takes a few milliseconds and reboots. It may be forthe first repairto be succesfull a reboot is needed before the next operation. I'm not sure why the first repair was 65 minutes but there may be an explanation for it. Before the repair you have the option to view a log that tells you what is detected and what action will be taken rather than just hitting repair and reboot. If you kept a log of this i'd have more to go on. All in all it has a good recovery system, more automated than before.

Hey Paul, 65 minutes is nothing. I'm sitting here staring at startup repair (I'm on a different computer) that's taken about two hours to just sit there and look stupid. Not to mention that my laptop's been giving me a ____ of a lot of trouble since I've installed Windows 7. I had a few blue screens but It just blinks before restarting so I didn't know what it said. So yeah, last time I reset during this startup it killed my computer. This is driving me up the wall.

this happened to me during the beta. what I learned was NEVER and I mean NEVER use the system repair option. It's the PC equivalent to pasting a kick me sign on your backside. Do anything else you can think of but do not use the repair option. Use repair only if you have given up and are prepared to format and reinstall. I have XP installed on another drive, and I also have win7 installation imaged with Acronis (though obviously, this wouldn't have helped in your case). In this way, I'm better prepared to deal with unbootable win7.

Personally, I've used it many times to repair my system, and mightI add it came in very handy. One thing itcan't always dois restore a missing bootmgr, sodual boot with your administrative system which is s a must in my opinion, becauseI don't and shouldn't expectvery much from any bootup repair system.

Hard drive is fried apparently, Second time it happened on my laptop.

I just woke up and had to use startup repair for the first time (since installing on Oct. 22; I didn't beta test) after a power outage late last night. It ran for 4 minutes and then Windows 7 booted perfectly.

One little thing startup repair will not fix is the assignment of active partitions. If a partition with boot files (bootmgr, bcd) is not marked as active you will get "bootmgr is missing". If the messege was "ntldr is missing" startup repair will only fix the boot secter and the messege will again say "bootmgr is missing". The only way to fix it is to boot to startup repair and open a command prompt thenmarkthe partiton with the boot store activeby runnningDiskpart utility.Seesons greetings!

I just had the same sort of problem, after using win 7 rc for over 3 months without any problems, this morning it suddenly hanged @ starting windows. Didnt change any hardware or software. At first when I clicked system repair, that also hanged.. After 4 reboots it booted into windows and I did system restore. Than again it hanged, and after 2 reboots the system repair booted finally. After waiting 30 minutes, it said we can't fix this problem ->send microsoft. It showed a log wich referred to d:\windows (i have everything installed on c:\).. From now on I think I'll let by computer go into sleep everytime because it just instantly boots and I don't have 2 risk the hassle of this. If any of you know what the problem is, please let me know though..

ive got a simliar problem except my icons have vanished the start up repair or mbr does nothing to fix it in currently using my splashtop browser

65 minutes? Mine took 720 minutes and it is still running. On the startup, it does not allow me to start Windows normally, or it maybe unable to. The only option I have is to use the Startup Repair. I have no idea how to fix my laptop. Can anyone help?